Budget worries Meals on Wheels
Local agencies fear federal cuts in food deliveries for seniors
SANFORD — Cora Brown, 73, embraced Meals on Wheels volunteer Lorraine Naetzker as she arrived this week with Brown’s breakfast and dinner.
“Hey, Ms. Cora, how are you today?” Naetzker, 52, asked. “Good to see you.”
Brown used to deliver Meals on Wheels to others. Then her husband, Louis, was shot in the head on the way to a church Bible study, and her health faltered.
For about eight years, she has been among more than 3,000 Central Florida seniors 60 or older who depend on the service that is in jeopardy of losing a portion of its funding under President Donald Trump’s proposed federal budget.
Trump’s spending blueprint calls for a 17.9 percent cut for the U.S. Department of Health and
Human Services, which funds nutrition programs for the elderly. It also would ax a $3 billion Community Development Block Grant program that funds services that include Meals on Wheels.
Leaders of the nonprofits that run the five-day-a-week program in Orange, Seminole and Osceola counties are worried.
“We’re the richest nation in the world. People should not be going hungry,” said Marsha Lorenz, president and CEO of Seniors First, which serves 1,600 Meals on Wheels clients in Orange. “If [we] don’t do this, where do they go? There’s no safety net that’s going to step up to the plate.”
Brown worked as a supermarket cashier and raised six children in the house where she now lives with her Chihuahua-Papillon mix, Gracie. She took care of her husband at home for 8½ years after the 2006 shooting, in which a man who was aiming at someone else accidentally shot Louis Brown.
The injury left him paralyzed, and Cora Brown eventually had to put her husband in a nursing home.
Brown, who anticipated spending a secure retirement traveling with her husband, a retired CSX railroad cook who served in the Air Force during the Vietnam era, soon struggled to pay the bills.
That’s when Meals on Wheels stepped in.
The service is free to recipients and has more than 1,000 people on a waiting list in Central Florida. Funding varies by location, but in Seminole, for example, 37 percent comes from the federal government.
“If they take the meals from the seniors, it’s going to be rough on them,” Brown said. “It’s inhumane, I think.”
It is unclear how much of a hit Meals on Wheels would take if Congress approves Trump’s budget, but officials with the program expect it to be affected.
Local Meals on Wheels providers receive about 35 percent of their revenues under the Older Americans Act Nutrition Program, administered by Health and Human Services, according to Meals on Wheels America.
The figure varies by location. Lake, which serves 90 seniors and has 300 on a waiting list, depends entirely on Older Americans Act money, said Mat Kline, director of senior services for Mid-Florida Community Services, which administers Meals on Wheels in the county.
Other counties are supported by a combination of county, city, United Way and private contributions. The Seminole program, which delivers meals to about 275 homes daily, has its own catering company that provides 32 percent of its revenues.
Concerned about the potential cuts, Meals on Wheels providers are lobbying legislators. Nationally, donations and volunteer signups surged after Trump’s announcement, but the money isn’t passed down to local organizations, according to Seniors First.
Mick Mulvaney, Trump’s budget director, said that although Meals on Wheels “sounds great,” there is no evidence that the program is effective.
Providers, however, say the program saves taxpayer money by allowing people to remain at home and out of nursing homes, which cost an estimated $90,000 a year. Each home-delivered meal costs about $5.60, or about $2,900 annually.
But Meals on Wheels provides more than nutrition. Volunteers check on clients, who often live alone and have no relatives nearby — a particular problem in Florida, with its large population of seniors.
At times, Meals on Wheels is a lifesaver.
A 2015 review by the Journal of Nutrition in Gerontology and Geriatrics of dozens of studies concluded that home-delivered meals may help seniors stay independent. A Brown University study commissioned the same year by Meals on Wheels America found that people receiving the service had fewer falls and hospitalizations, felt safer at home and less isolated.
In Osceola, which delivers to 465 clients, a woman recently discharged from the hospital didn’t answer the door when a volunteer arrived, said Wilda Belisle, nutrition director at the county Council on Aging. Meals on Wheels called the police, who found her unconscious and had her taken back to the hospital.
In Seminole, meals are prepared from scratch. Delaño Lambertclare, chef for the 44-year-old program, plans nutritious fare designed to be light on sodium and sugar, yet tasty. On Tuesday, workers assembled chicken Caesar salad and scooped vegetable pasta salad into partitioned trays for Wednesday’s dinner.
Clients, whose average age is 80, also receive a breakfast of cold cereal, milk, bread, fruit and juice.
“They’re trying to make ends meet, and they’re having a hard time,” said Sherry Fincher, executive director of Meals on Wheels, Etc., which runs Seminole County's program. “It’s nothing they did wrong in their lives.”